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General Motors, George W. Bush, Charlton Heston, Oscar hecklers and other targets and critics of Michael Moore’s finger-pointing documentaries couldn’t stop or even slow the man down.

A nasty little bug did. The baseball-hatted filmmaker from Flint, Michigan, has been laid low in recent days by a bout of pneumonia. The virus sent him to hospital just as he was readying a promotional tour for his new film, Where to Invade Next, which begins its theatrical run Friday following its world premiere at TIFF last September.

He’s out now, recuperating at his New York apartment.

“I feel better every day, but it’s going to take a couple more weeks before it’s all gone,” Moore tells the Star.

“I was burning the candle at ‘three ends’ and if you’re going to do that much work, you’ve got to get eight hours sleep to begin with, or at least six.”

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While he can’t travel at the moment, Moore can still talk about Where to Invade Next. It was called “Mike’s happy movie” during production because of its positive social agenda for America, courtesy of ideas found elsewhere.

Should the subtitle for this movie have been ‘The Revenge of Michael Moore’? You travel the world and discover many of your proposals rejected by conservatives in the U.S. — such as job safeguards in ‘Roger and Me,’ gun control in ‘Bowling for Columbine’ and universal health care in ‘Sicko’ — are actually working in other countries.

Ha-ha! I never thought of it that way! I’ve tilled the soil since Roger and Me on these issues I’ve been putting them forward for almost 30 years now. I’m certainly the same person I was, with the same politics and the same beliefs. I didn’t change, but the country changed and came towards me. In that time, my fellow Americans elected a man twice whose middle name is Hussein. That’s America now. If you’re in love with someone of the same gender, you can now legally marry them. And Obamacare is the first stop to “Canadacare,” which is why the Republicans are so crazy about it. It’s the future. We’re going to have your health care system!

So many of the progressive social ideas in ‘Where to Invade Next’ seem to be also in Democratic reformer Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign playbook. Has he written to you yet to thank you?

Ha-ha, again! He hasn’t seen the movie, so he has no idea of how he could probably really exploit the movie for himself. Obviously we shot the film before he even announced (his presidential campaign). I think probably last year, when we were first putting it together, if you had asked the film crew and me, the majority of us were hoping Elizabeth Warren would run, so we’d have both our first woman president and a true progressive in the White House. But Bernie supporters who have seen the movie are gobsmacked. They can’t believe it.

So I’m very happy to see that’s where the American public is at. I’m not really surprised though. I’ve felt for some time that the majority of people sided with me. It wasn’t always the case.

Why are Americans so often resistant to change? The U.S. always seems to have trouble embracing new ideas.

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This is a country of scaredy cats, seriously. In my read of history, I don’t know of any other group of people who are motivated more by fear than any other emotion. There’s constantly something to be afraid of. That’s why we have the bogeyman of the international war on terror. How many Americans has ISIS killed to date, the organization itself? You don’t need both hands to count them. Yet a congressional committee’s research showed 49,000 Americans die each year for the simple fact they don’t have health insurance or enough health insurance, so they are killed because they are American. The only reason they’re dead is because of the health insurance or lack of it.

You’ve said you were surprised by how positive you are in this movie. Have you had an equally positive response from Americans who have seen it?

Oh, yes! I’m getting reports from the theatres that there are a lot of tissues coming out, because Americans cry during a movie. They cry because they’re sad that the rest of the civilized world has these things and we don’t. And as for me, you can’t help but feel good travelling to other places and seeing your American dream in action. And of course, my attitude is, well, geez, if Slovenians can do it, can’t we do it?

You don’t visit Canada for this movie, but you’ve always been a keen follower of our national affairs. What do you think of Justin Trudeau, our new prime minister?

He’s great, and his comic timing is impeccable. When he unveiled his cabinet last fall and someone asked him why half of his cabinet ministers were women, he didn’t just give the politician’s answer. He just stood there for that little beat that a great comedian, a great satirist knows how to do, and he just said, “Uh, because it’s 2015.” Ha-ha! Omigod, Justin, America will catch up to you! We’ll get there!

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